Editor’s Note: This story was originally published by Grist. Sign up for Grist’s weekly newsletter here.
When the Flandreau Santee Sioux Tribe landed a $19.9 million grant from the Environmental Protection Agency in early January, Robert Byrnes was elated. As a grant writer for the tribe, he and a few other employees had pulled 60-hour weeks during the holidays to ensure the agency had all the paperwork it needed to award the funds. The much-needed money would be put to use on the tribe’s reservation in South Dakota, repairing a historic bridge that had been razed a few years ago due to safety concerns, replacing asphalt roofs, and establishing resilience hubs to help tribal members during extreme weather. The grant was, as Byrnes put it, the “hugest” the tribe ever received for environmental work.
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